This invention relates generally to motorized toy vehicles, and more particularly to an articulated vehicle composed of a wheeled tractor section and a series of wheeled trailer sections hitched thereto by means of a motor-driven, interlinked, multi-section drive shaft, each shaft section of which is operatively coupled to a wheel axle of a respective vehicle section.
Motion pictures such as "Star Wars" and "The Return of The Jedi," which dramatize combat carried out by Martians and other space creatures on remote planets have captured the imagination of many children. These children therefore seek, in play, to enact their own versions of war games on imaginary planets.
Though the planet is fanciful, it is still necessary to create for purposes of play a seemingly realistic terrain therefor. And for this purpose, the usual inspiration is the now familiar terrain of the moon whose appearance has been viewed by millions on television. The reason the moon's terrain is often used as a prototype for the terrain of a remote planet is that it is altogether free of vegetation found on earch and of man-made artifacts such as paved roads and housing structures. The moon's terrain is highly irregular, being formed of troughs, pits, rocky peaks and other non-planar formations.
Hence, if one wishes to provide a toy combat vehicle adapted for play on a miniature replica of a rough planetary terrain, this vehicle must be capable of negotiating the terrain irregularities. The typical toy motorized vehicle, even one having high traction wheels, though capable of traveling over flat roads or of riding up and down gently sloped or contoured surfaces, cannot, without stalling, traverse a terrain composed of successive troughs and peaks, or a succession of miniature hills and dales.
Thus, while a conventional motorized toy vehicle can travel without difficulty down a small peak into a trough, if the vehicle then encounters another peak and has to climb out of the trough up this peak, it lacks the drive power to do so. The typical motorized vehicle has no automatic transmission and cannot shift to a low gear to augment its drive power. Hence, while for play purposes one can provide a child with a miniature replica of a highly irregular planetary terrain on which to conduct war games or other exercises, toy vehicles capable of traversing this terrain are not commercially available.